1.
It’s a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves?.
2.
Does such a thing as ‘the fatal flaw,’ that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn’t. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.
3.
Forgive me, for all the things I did, but mostly for the ones that I did not.
The Secret History
4.
Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming.
5.
It seems to me that psychology is only another word for what the ancients called fate.
The Secret History
6.
I believe that having a great diversity of teachers is harmful and confusing for a young mind, in the same way I believe that it is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially.
The Secret History
7.
“But how,” said Charles, who was close to tears, “how can you possibly justify cold-blooded murder?’
The Secret History
Henry lit a cigarette. “I prefer to think of it,” he had said, “as redistribution of matter.”
8.
Some things are too terrible to grasp at once. Other things – naked, sputtering, indelible in their horror – are too terrible to really grasp ever at all. It is only later, in solitude, in memory that the realization dawns: when the ashes are cold; when the mourners have departed; when one looks around and finds oneself – quite to one’s surprise – in an entirely different world.
9.
There is nothing wrong with the love of Beauty. But Beauty – unless she is wed to something more meaningful – is always superficial.
10.
There are such things as ghosts. People everywhere have always known that. And we believe in them every bit as much as Homer did. Only now, we call them by different names. Memory. The unconscious.
The Secret History
11.
We think we have many desires, but in fact we have only one. What is it?
The Secret History
“To live,” said Camilla.
“To live forever.”
12.
Any action, in the fullness of time, sinks to nothingness.
13.
It is a terrible thing to learn as a child that one is a being separate from the world, that no one and no thing hurts along with one’s burned tongues and skinned knees, that one’s aches and pains are all one’s own. Even more terrible, as we grow older, to learn that no person, no matter how beloved, can ever truly understand us. Our own selves make us most unhappy, and that’s why we’re so anxious to lose them, don’t you think?
14.
What are the dead, anyway, but waves and energy? Light shining from a dead star?
15.
After all, the appeal to stop being yourself, even for a little while, is very great.